Are We There Yet? A History of Popular Car Games

For more than a century, road trips have been a hallmark of American culture. To keep restless kids entertained and silence the inevitable “are we there yet?” chorus, families have long turned to car games. From simple, observation-based classics like I Spy to today’s sophisticated digital entertainment, these games have evolved alongside both cars and society itself. 

When Henry Ford released the Model T in 1908, it revolutionized both transportation and leisure. For the first time, middle-class Americans could afford to travel by car, but early models were loud and clunky, with most roads unpaved and bumpy. 

“Playing games while on the road—or even carrying on a lengthy conversation—wasn’t really possible,” says Richard Ratay, author of Don’t Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the Family Road Trip. “It wasn’t until after World War II, when better automobile manufacturing methods made riding in cars smoother, quieter and more comfortable, that people began to seek out novel ways to entertain themselves while out on the road.”

Early road trip games often adapted existing board games, according to Ratay, including the Drueke Company’s popular magnetic portable chess set and the Magic Slate Drawing Pad. Invented by R.A. Watkins in 1923, it allowed kids to create and erase drawings easily, eliminating the need for paper or crayons. 

“Still in production today, the Magic Slate inspired the introduction of the much-beloved Etch-A-Sketch Magic Screen in 1960,” Ratay says. 

After World War II, family road trips surged due to increased car ownership, a booming economy and new federal highways. Historian Susan Sessions Rugh writes in her book, Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations, that by 1954, nearly half of Americans planned summer trips. 

The 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, established the Interstate Highway System, making long-distance travel faster and safer and cars became more comfortable. According to Rugh and the U.S. Department of Energy, American car ownership rose significantly, from 60 percent of households in 1950 to 87 percent by 1980.

During this era, car games thrived. Beyond diversions like books or bubbles, popular group activities included Punch Buggy (aka Slug Bug), where spotting a Volkswagen Beetle earned a light punch in the arm, and games like the License Plate Game (where players win points for spotting the most state names), I Spy and the Alphabet Game, where players take turns calling out words seen on roadside signs and billboards in alphabetical order. “These required no technology at all—just good observational skills,” Ratay says. 

Wooly Willy, introduced in 1955, was another hit, allowing kids to use a magnetic pen to create fun features on a cartoon face, according to Ratay. He also notes Lee Publication’s wildly popular Yes & Know invisible ink quiz book series, launched in 1971 and likely inspired by the Cold War and James Bond gadgets. “Each book in this series included an invisible ink pen that allowed readers to reveal the answers to trivia questions, hunt down hidden submarines in game grids and play Hangman, among other games,” he says. 

Mad Libs activity books, first published in 1958, became another road trip staple. Ratay fondly recalls how his family enjoyed creating silly stories. “Tired and a bit giddy from long hours on the road, we’d sometimes be reduced to tears from reading back Mad Libs with our crazy suggestions added,” he says. “It really brought us all together.”

Then, there were the games that took place before the government established child safety standards. “Children routinely traveled in the front of the car, sitting between parents on the wide upholstered bench seat,” Rugh writes. “One way to entertain them was to allow them to pretend they were driving. The Junior Steering Wheel cost only $3 and attached to the dashboard with suction cups.”

As vehicles advanced, so did in-car entertainment. In addition to the AM/FM car radios introduced in the 1950s, and the eight-track and cassette players popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s brought portable cassette and CD players, like the Sony Walkman, allowing passengers to listen to their own music and books on tape. By the 1990s, rear-seat entertainment systems and DVD screens became common, with the first portable DVD players appearing in 1998. 

The introduction of handheld games, such as Simon, Merlin, Mattel Electronic Football and other sports games, led to faves like Game Boy and Tamagotchi, marking a significant shift in road trip entertainment, according to Ratay.

Despite the rise of air travel, road trips remain popular, accounting for nearly 40 percent of American vacations in 2016. However, the digital age brought a new slate of entertainment forms, including smartphones and tablets offering movies, audiobooks and game apps.

“Technology has had both a positive and negative effect on the family road trip experience,” Ratay says, noting that while the group games of 1960s and 1970s road trips were a collective experience, the popularity of personal electronic devices has changed that. 

“Sure, this technology offers fun new diversions,” he says. “But these devices also allow each family member to kind of retreat into their own personal world. Tablets allow young kids to watch their own movies. Teens get wrapped up with texting their friends on their smartphones. Mom or Dad slips on a pair of headphones to listen to a podcast or audiobook. We’re all in the same car, but we’re each in our own little world. In my opinion, that has somewhat diminished the magic of the shared family road trip experience.”

Still, Ratay says he believes traditional group games will live on, while conceding that there is also room for digital devices in the modern road trip experience. “We all need our personal space and time to ourselves, even when—or maybe especially when—we’re all crammed together in a car for hours on end,” he says.